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Medicine

Brain Implants Help Paralyzed Monkeys Get a Grip 54

Posted by samzenpus from the wired-reflexes dept.
sciencehabit writes "Spinal cord injuries cause paralysis because they sever crucial communication links between the brain and the muscles that move limbs. A new study with monkeys demonstrates a way to re-establish those connections. By implanting electrodes in a movement control center in the brain and wiring them up to electrodes attached to muscles in the arm, researchers restored movement to monkeys with a temporarily paralyzed hand. The work is the latest promising development in the burgeoning field of neuroprosthetics."
Government

GSA Emails Recount Inside Story of Exploding Toilets 119

Posted by samzenpus from the watch-where-you-sit dept.
First time accepted submitter v3rgEz writes "Six months ago, the toilets of the General Services Administration started exploding, injuring two employees and beginning the agency's spiral down the drain of bad press (this is the same GSA now under fire for pricey Vegas conference flings). E-mails just released under FOIA now show the culprit: Compressed air + ancient plumbing + leaving it all unattended."
Space

Was Earth a Migratory Planet? 257

Posted by samzenpus from the moving-to-a-better-orbit dept.
astroengine writes "Why our planet isn't a "snowball Earth" — a dilemma called the 'faint young sun paradox' — has foxed solar and planetary scientists for decades. Since the Earth's formation, a planet covered in ice should have stifled any kind of greenhouse effect, preventing our atmosphere from warming up and maintaining water in a liquid state. Now, David Minton of Purdue University has come up with a novel solution that, by his own admission, straddles science fact and fiction. Perhaps Earth evolved closer to the Sun and through some gravitational effect, it was pushed to a higher orbit as the Sun grew hotter. But watch out, if this is true, planetary chaos awaits."
Facebook

Zuckerberg Made Instagram Deal Alone 307

Posted by samzenpus from the going-solo dept.
benfrog writes "According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook's Board of Directors was all but out of the picture when Mark Zuckerberg struck the $1 billion deal to purchase Instagram, the yet-profitless photo-sharing service. From the article: 'It was a remarkably speedy three-day path to a deal for Facebook—a young company taking pains to portray itself as blue-chip ahead of its initial public offering of stock in a few weeks that could value it at up to $100 billion. Companies generally prefer to bring in ranks of lawyers and bankers to scrutinize a deal before proceeding, a process that can eat up days or weeks. Mr. Zuckerberg ditched all that. By the time Facebook's board was brought in, the deal was all but done. The board, according to one person familiar with the matter, 'Was told, not consulted.'"
Technology

Man Builds 737 Simulator In a Garage 102

Posted by samzenpus from the time-to-fly dept.
linuxwrangler writes "It started with a dream of building a full-sized jet flight simulator. Now, 20 years, $150,000 and one divorce later, James Price can walk to his garage and fly the 737 simulator he built built from the nose of a surplus 737. From the article: 'James Price had one must-have when looking for a new home -- the garage had to be able to hold the nose of a Boeing 737 jetliner. "Once I realized I could get it in here, I was OK with the house," Price said. In his spacious three-car garage Price has a well-traveled jetliner cockpit tucked in next to the family car. Aviation experts say Price, 52, is one of only a handful of people in the world who have built their own flight simulator cockpit in an actual jet nose."
Cellphones

Federal Court Allows Class-Action Suit Against Apple Over In-App Purchases 279

Posted by samzenpus from the think-of-the-children dept.
suraj.sun writes "An iPhone-owner whose daughter downloaded $200 worth of 'Zombie Toxin' and 'Gems' through in-app purchases on his iPhone has been allowed to pursue a class action suit against Apple for compensation of up to $5m. Garen Meguerian of Pennsylvania launched the class-action case against Apple in April 2011 after he discovered that his nine-year-old daughter had been draining his credit card account through in-app purchases on 'free' games including Zombie Cafe and Treasure Story. This month, Judge Edward J Davila in San Jose District Federal Court has allowed the case to go to trial, rejecting Apple's claim that the case should be dismissed. Meguerian claimed that Apple was unfairly targeting children by allowing games geared at kids to push them to make purchases. He describes games that are free to play but require purchases of virtual goods to progress as 'bait apps' and says they should not be aimed at children."
Government

Asian Call Center Workers Trained With US Tax Dollars 274

Posted by samzenpus from the bug-in-the-system dept.
gManZboy writes in with a troubling story about tax dollars being used for overseas call center training. "Despite President Obama's recent call for companies to 'insource' jobs sent overseas, it turns out that the federal government itself is spending millions of dollars to train foreign students for employment in some booming career fields--including working in offshore call centers that serve U.S. businesses. The program is called JEEP, which stands for Job Enabling English Proficiency. It's available to college students in the Philippines through USAID. That's the same agency that until a couple of years ago was spending millions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money to train offshore IT workers in Sri Lanka. Congressman Tim Bishop (D-New York), told about the program on Tuesday, called it 'surprising and distressing.' Bishop recently introduced a bill that would make companies that outsource call centers ineligible for government contracts."
Books

Book Review: The CERT Guide To Insider Threats 27

Posted by samzenpus from the protect-ya-neck dept.
benrothke writes "While Julius Caesar likely never said 'Et tu, Brute?' the saying associated with his final minutes has come to symbolize the ultimate insider betrayal. In The CERT Guide to Insider Threats: How to Prevent, Detect, and Respond to Information Technology Crimes, authors Dawn Cappelli, Andrew Moore and Randall Trzeciak of the CERT Insider Threat Center provide incontrovertible data and an abundance of empirical evidence, which creates an important resource on the topic of insider threats. There are thousands of companies that have uttered modern day versions of Et tu, Brute due to insidious insider attacks and the book documents many of them." Read on for the rest of Ben's review.
Crime

15-Year-Old Arrested For Hacking 259 Companies 153

Posted by samzenpus from the needs-more-homework dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Austrian police have arrested a 15-year-old student suspected of hacking into 259 companies across the span of three months. Authorities allege the suspect scanned the Internet for vulnerabilities and bugs in websites and databases that he could then exploit. As soon as he was questioned, the young boy confessed to the attacks, according to Austria's Federal Criminal Police Office (BMI)."
Earth

Wind Turbine Extracts Water From Air 227

Posted by samzenpus from the making-the-most-of-moist dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Getting access to enough water to drink in a desert environment is a pretty tough proposition, but Eole Water may have solved the problem. It has created a wind turbine that can extract up to 1,000 liters of water per day from the air. All it requires is a 15mph wind to generate the 30kW's of power required for the process to happen. The end result is a tank full of purified water ready to drink at the base of each turbine."
Image

Magician Suing For Copyright Over Magic Trick 296

Posted by samzenpus from the trick-for-treats dept.
Fluffeh writes "Teller, the silent half of the well-known magic duo Penn and Teller, has sued a rival magician for copying one of his most famous illusions. The case promises to test the boundaries of copyright law as it applies to magic tricks. A Dutch magician with the stage name Gerard Bakardy (real name: Gerard Dogge) saw Teller perform the trick in Las Vegas and developed his own version — then started selling a kit — including a fake rose, instructions, and a DVD — for about $3,000. Teller had Bakardy's video removed with a DMCA takedown notice, then called Bakardy to demand that the magician stop using his routine. Teller offered to buy Bakardy out, but they were unable to agree on a price. So Teller sued Bakardy last week in a Nevada federal court."
Earth

Apple: Greenpeace's Cloud Critique Driven By Bogus Numbers 188

Posted by samzenpus from the check-the-figures dept.
miller60 writes "Apple says Greenpeace has wildly overestimated the amount of power it uses in its data center in North Carolina, and used that bad math to give the company a low grade on sustainability. Apple says it uses 20 megawatts of power at its iDataCenter, a fraction of Greenpeace's estimate of 100 megawatts in a new report on energy use by cloud computing providers. Apple says that its huge solar array and biogas-powered fuel cell will supply 60 percent of the facility's power, not the 10 percent claimed by Greenpeace."
Communications

Happy World Amateur Radio Day 82

Posted by samzenpus from the what's-your-handle? dept.
An anonymous reader writes "There are over 700,000 ham radio licensees in the USA and about 2 ½ million worldwide. Today, this international community of wireless communications devotees are celebrating World Amateur Radio Day, recalling the advances Amateur Radio Service has made for modern man. Their theme for 2012 is Amateur Radio Satellites: Celebrating 50 Years in Space in remembrance of the launch of the first Amateur Radio satellites OSCAR 1 on December 12, 1961 and the launch of OSCAR 2 on June 2, 1962. Their ranks have included people like Steve Wozniak of Apple and Jack Kilby who invented the integrated circuit, Dr. Karl William Edmark who invented the heart defibrillator, Scott Durchslag, the Chief Operating Officer at Skype, and Dr. John Grunsfeld of NASA and the Hubble Space Telescope. This is the 87th anniversary of the foundation."
Businesses

CIOs Dismissed As Techies Without Business Savvy By CEOs 269

Posted by samzenpus from the no-respect dept.
Qedward writes in with a link about the gap between the tech side of business and the bean counters. "CIOs are being dismissed by CEOs as too techie and not aligned with business activities. According to recent Gartner survey of 220 CEOs across the world, business leaders expect spending on IT to rise, but without a corresponding rise in the importance of the role of the CIO within the organization. CIOs appear to be failing in the eyes of CEOs in terms of alignment with the rest of the business. The research showed the stereotype of the head of IT being too preoccupied with technical issues to be effective business leaders persists. He said they were perceived as unable to bring a breadth of business perspective to the table."

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